Before the pandemic, finding a place to use a sauna wasn’t a big deal in the Hamptons. You could use the one at the Sag Harbor Gym, you could use the steam room at the gym in Southampton and in general, you could count on any gym in the area that was going to open up, to offer up a sauna. If you were really slick, you could figure out a way to get into the sauna at Gurney’s.
But then the pandemic hit and it suddenly made a lot of sense to not sit in a small hot room packed with sweaty people. Let’s face it, even before the pandemic, getting into a public sauna didn’t feel that different from drinking out of somebody else’s cup. You know it’s gross, but you got over it.
Today, sauna culture has changed. The gyms are open, but the sauna’s are closed. What’s a guy to do? Well, you pay to go.
I resisted the idea of paying to use a sauna at first. Hamptons Float in Water Mill offers a 1 hour sauna session for $40 and all I could think when I first heard about it was, “well that’s a rip-off.” Then I started the pathetic journey of googling saunas on Amazon, only to find myself seriously considering spending $500 on an electric blanket that is marketed as a sauna.
I cracked on the pay for sauna service, and I’m glad that I did.
Having your own little sauna session at Hamptons Float is wonderful. It’s your own little man cave for a full hour. You’re in complete privacy, it’s clean and since your paying for the service, you force yourself to stay in the sauna for longer than you normally would. Or at least that’s the way I feel about it. For me, the sauna is one of those things that I didn’t realize how much I missed that was taken from us during the pandemic, and it is so nice to detox and destress in your own private sauna, for $40 it’s a nice little one hour vacation that’s worth the price. I plan on making it part of my weekly routine.
